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GIF PROMPTS
JADE: SUPERNATURAL CHEERS
On the outside it seemed normal, ordinary even, like any other bar. In fact, when Andy stepped out of the cab and looked up at it she wasn’t sure why Tyler took them so far out of the way to get a drink. “I don’t get it,” she said. “This is the special place you’ve been talking about? What was wrong with the pub down the street from the hotel? Or the hotel bar for that matter? You know I’m not a big fan of working too hard for a drink? What, do they got a happy hour thing going on or something?”
“It’s not the drinks that are special, Barclay,” Tyler said. “It’s the people. This place, it’s owned by a Succubus, the bartender is a friend of mine, a witch. You know Cheers, the show Cheers, ‘thank you for being a friend,’ that sort of Cheers? Well, this is supernatural Cheers.”
It clicked inside Andy like a light switch flipping on. Her face relaxed and she muttered a soft, “Oh,” that turned into a smile. Drinking was one thing, but drinking some place where you didn’t have to put your guards up, some place where a drinker could be themselves… there was something special about that, and when Andy followed Tyler inside, she did so happily.
“Okay, but I get to be Rhea Pearlman.”
CLAIRVOYANT PROTECTOR: DAD JOKES
“Don’t humor him,” Lorraine Warren’s warning was firm but lightened by a smile.
Andy sat at the kitchen table in the Warren house, nursing a cup of tea with Ed on one side of her and Lorraine on the other. She was visiting for the weekend, a long overdue visit to two people who were kind to her as a child. Foster kids grew up with an assortment of stand-in parents, but even though Andy never actually lived with the Warrens, she always thought of them as being the closest thing to a set of parents outside of her mother or even now her step-father Mike. That made these visits special, that made Ed’s barrage of bad dad jokes special.
“Did you hear about the kidnapping at school?” Ed asked, setting up his joke.
“No,” Andy shook her head, doing her best to match Lorraine’s firmness and not crack.
“It’s okay,” Ed said. “He woke up.”
Andy buckled a little bit and her effort to contain her uncomfortable laugh manifested into a snort. She smiled and laughed and looked at Lorraine with apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it’s just so stupid.”
SPOOKY FVCKER: CREEPY CRAIGSLIST
Running an occult shop like DejaVoodoo was not always easy. The hardest bits of it, Andy found, were acquiring new rare objects to stock the more peculiar sections of the store. She had many contacts in the supernatural community and that was where she acquired most of it. Sometimes she didn’t need to get involved at all, but sometimes things happened to be a little shadier than others. Sometimes you ordered in bulk from a seller than you were accustomed to doing business with and sometimes you sat in a car in an empty parking lot with some spooky f***er you met on Craigslist.
Andy was the buyer, the seller was a man named Ruairi Moriarty. The item in question was a dagger, a very particular dagger that Andy had been trying to find for a while now. She didn’t know how this guy had it, and she didn’t really want to know, all she knew was that she would drop as much money as she had to in order to walk away with that treasure.
“Let me be real with you for a second, Ru, can I call you Ru? I’m gonna call you Ru.” Andy sat in the driver’s seat. He sat in the passenger seat. “Let me be real with you, Ru. I would give my left tit for this item. That being said, I don’t think my wife would be happy. She would also not be very happy if I paid too much, so we’re not here talking about what I am willing to spend for this, we’re talking about what my wife is willing to spend. You haven’t met my wife but… trust me, we’re both going to want to make sure she’s happy.”
Andy pointed through the windshield to the tall blonde sitting on the hood of the Camaro at the other end of the parking lot.
“She’s the tough looking werewolf over there making sure you don’t try anything funny,” Andy said. “So… you have my price. Do we have a deal?”
CLAIRE: TROUBLING DREAM
The house wasn’t anything Andy recognized. Maybe it wasn’t even a real house, just walls conjured together from different things slipping through Andy’s subconscious. That was how dreams worked, wasn’t it? It didn’t have to be real to feel real, and even if the location was strange it felt genuine in the moment. Andy moved down the dark halls, heart racing in her chest, and she choked on fear.
Rounding the corner, Andy’s eyes opened wide and she clutched her hands over her mouth to contain the shock inside. Ahead of her were her children, all of them, including Wyatt, floating there in the room, blank expressions on their face. They were lifted by a cool blue light and they hovered in the darkness lost in some sort of distant trance. Andy went to charge but she couldn’t move. All she could do was watch and stare and keep from screaming as he children suffered.
Then she woke up.
Maybe it was the scream that woke Claire up too, or maybe Claire was already awake, but before Andy could tell that she was fully out of the dream Claire had her in her arms, holding her, soothing her, and telling her that it was all going to be okay.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Andy said after she had calmed down. “I know it’s just a dream but there’s this feeling coming along with it. This tickle in the back of my skull. Something is after our children, Claire. Something wants our family.”
Rose petals fell from the ceiling, drifting down like crimson snowflakes from the ceiling. Andy looked up in awe, fear in her eyes, but when she reached to turn on the light the roses were gone, and Claire and Andy sat in their empty bed staring at one another, unsure how to move forward. Unsure of what was happening to them.
MOLLIE: FARTS
Andy entered the kitchen expecting it to be empty, so she was a little startled to find Mollie in there having a late night ice cream snack. “Whoa, you scared me. I thought you might be your sister. Andrea’s normally the one sneaking down for some midnight snackage.” Going to the freezer, Andy grabbed an ice cream sandwich and joined Mollie at the table. As soon as she sat down the room thumped as Mollie let out an almost deafening fart that sounded like a cracking whip.
Andy waited for Mollie to say excuse me but it seemed like Mollie was getting too big of a kick out of the noise her butt made to show her manners. “You’re gross,” Andy said, squinting her face up before eventually breaking and laughing a little.
“You’re just like your mom,” Andy said, but then she caught herself and added, “Actually, I don’t think you get all that gas from her side of the family.” The recent revelation that Mollie was in fact Andy’s biological daughter too, and had been all along, was still paying off in small ways, including the occasional moment like this. “You didn’t hear it from me but grandma Karen actually has the most noxious farts in the family. She puts Claire to shame. But she’ll kill us both if anyone finds out, so, that’s gotta be our little secret.”
Andy reached over and took Mollie’s spoon, helping herself to a scoop of her ice cream and offering her a bite of her ice cream sandwich as a trade.
ANDREA: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY
“I’m serious,” Andy said to her youngest daughter. “I don’t joke around when it comes to dancing. It sounds silly but it’s true, it works for me every single time. Without a doubt.” Andy clapped her hands and pushed off the ground to stand up. She was in the twins’ room, having another one of her mom talks with little Andi and trying to come up with new ways for Andrea to channel some of that spunk she struggled with as a teenager.
“You might think it’s stupid, but I promise you this will change your life.” Andy pulled her phone out, shuffled through some music, and plugged it into the aux cord of a speaker Andrea’s sister Julia had on the other side of the room. “You ever feel sad, or angry, or excited, or nervous, or any feeling you can think of that’s simply too overwhelming and makes you feel like you’re about to burst, you channel that out in a dance.” Andy selected a song, I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston, and she danced, rolling her hips and jabbing out her elbows, showing Andrea how it was done.
“Try it. There’s no wrong way, I know you’re a good dancer, it’s fun, and that’s the point. You have fun. You replace whatever thought is consuming you and you just focus on the fun, even if it’s for a few minutes. It won’t make the trouble go away but it’ll put you in a better state of mind to deal with it. Now come on, get up, firecracker, dance with me. Show me what you got!”
AVERY: CAN’T TASTE BUTTER
Andy was rushing, that’s what she was going to blame it on anyway, the fact that she was in a hurry. The truth was she was just being lazy. She saw a half-opened water bottle sitting in the living room and she drank from it. She was thirsty, it was there, she didn’t seem the harm in it. The only problem was, the water belonged to her daughter Avery, and Avery had recently gotten into the habit of leaving some of her witchy stuff around. Andy took a swig of the water and her tongue went tingly. She didn’t think much of it after that, but it was only a matter of time before she discovered the consequence of drinking a witch’s water.
It was a few hours later when Andy stopped by the cabinet in the kitchen to get some pretzels to munch on. She popped a few in her mouth and crunched down, but her face squinted in confusion. She couldn’t taste them. These pretzels were salty as hell and she couldn’t taste a thing. She tried some more but nothing. They had no taste. Reaching for some chips, she tried them next. It was the same. Her tongue wasn’t picking up any flavor. “Uh oh.”
Going to the fridge, Andy pushed aside some of the fruits and veggies and reached for her favorite food in the whole world—butter—and she took a bite of a fresh stick, just as she had done countless times in the past. She chewed and chewed and chewed, but couldn't taste any of that creamy deliciousness.
“Avery!” she yelled out for her daughter, mouth still full with butter she couldn’t taste. “Help!”
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